The Vehement Flame Part 56

Jacky's mother said, in a m.u.f.fled voice, "My land!" Then she caught Jacky in her arms and kissed him all over his face.

"Aw, stop," said Jacky, greatly embarra.s.sed; to have Mr. Curtis see him being kissed, "like a kid!" was a cruel mortification. "Aw, let up,"

said Jacky.

When he and Mr. Curtis started in to town his eyes seemed to grow bluer, and his face more beaming, and his voice, asking endless questions, more joyous every minute. In the car he shoved up very close to Maurice, and tried to think of something wonderful to tell him. By and by, breathing loudly, he achieved: "Say, Mr. Curtis, our ash sifter got broke." Then he shoved a little closer. Just before they reached Mrs. Newbolt's house the haggard, unhappy father gave his son orders:

"There is a lady who wants to see you, Jacky. She's my wife. Mrs.

Curtis. You are to be very polite to her, and kiss her--"

"Kiss a lady!"

"Yes. You'll do what I tell you! Understand?"

"Yes, sir," Jacky said, sniffling.

"You are to tell her you love her; but you are not to speak unless you are spoken to. Do you get on to that?"

"Yes, sir. No, sir," poor Jacky said, dejectedly.

It was Edith who, watching for Maurice from the parlor window, opened the front door to him. She looked up into his eyes, then down into Jacky's, who, at that moment, took the opportunity, sighing, to obey orders; be reached up and gave a little peck at Edith's cheek.

"I love you," he said, gloomily. "I done it," he told Maurice. "_He_ said I got to," he explained to Edith, resignedly, as she, startled but pleased, took his little rough hand in hers.

Just as she did so Mrs. Newbolt, coming downstairs, saw him and stopped short in the middle of a sentence--the relationship between the man and the child was unmistakable. When she got her breath she said, coldly: "There's a change, Maurice. Better go right upstairs."

He went, hurriedly, leading his little boy by the hand.

"Well, upon my word!" said Mrs. Newbolt, looking after the small, climbing figure in the new suit. "I wouldn't have believed such a thing of Maurice Curtis--oh, my poor Eleanor!" she said, and burst out crying.

"I suppose she knows? Did she want to see the child? I always said she was a puffect angel! But I don't wonder she--she got wet ..."

Eleanor was very close to the River now, yet she smiled when Jacky's shrinking lips touched her cheek.

"Take her hand," Maurice told him, softly, and the little boy, silent and frightened, obeyed; but he kept his eyes on his father.

Eleanor, with long pauses, said: "Dear ... Jacky. Maurice, did you give her ... five cents? He must have ... music lessons."

"Yes, Star," he said, brokenly. "Jacky," he said, in a whisper, "say 'I love you.'"

But Jacky whispered back, anxiously, "But I said it to the other one?"

"_Say it!_" his father said.

"I love you," said Jacky, trembling.

Eleanor smiled, slept for a moment, then opened her eyes. "He doesn't look ... like _her_?"

"Not in the least," Maurice said.

Jacky, quailing, tried to draw his hand away from those cool fingers; but a look from his father stopped him.

"No," Eleanor murmured; "I see ... it won't do for"--Maurice bent close to her lips, but he could not catch the next words--"for you to marry her."

After that she was silent for so long that Maurice led the little boy out of the room. As he brought him into the parlor, Henry Houghton, who had just come in, looked at the father and son, and felt astonishment tingle in his veins like an electric shock. He gripped Maurice's hand, silently, and gave Jacky's ear a friendly pull.

"Edith," Maurice Said, "I would take him home, but I mustn't leave Eleanor. Will you get one of the maids to put him on a Medfield car--"

"I'll take him," Edith said.

Maurice began to say, sharply, "_No!_" then he stopped; after all, why not? "She must know the whole business by this time. Jacky's face gives it all away." She might as well, he thought, know Jacky's mother, as she knew his father.

Jacky, in a little growling voice, said, "Don't want _n.o.body_ to put me on no car. I can--"

"Be quiet, my boy," Maurice said, gently. He gave Edith Lily's address and went back upstairs.

Henry Houghton, watching and listening, felt his face twitch; then he blew his nose loudly. "I'll look after him," he told Edith. "I--I'll take him to--the person he lives with. It isn't suitable for a girl--"

In spite of the gravity of the moment his girl laughed. "Father, you _are_ a lamb! No; I'll take him." Then she gave Jacky a cooky, which he ate thoughtfully.

"We have 'em nicer at our house," he said. On the corner, waiting for the Medfield car, Edith offered a friendly hand, which he refused to notice. The humiliation of being taken home, "by a woman!" was scorching his little pride. He made up his mind that if them scab Dennett boys seen him getting out of the car with a woman, he'd lick the tar out of them! All the way to Maple Street he sat with his face glued to the window, never speaking a word to the "woman." When the car stopped he pushed out ahead of her and tore down the street. Happily no Dennett boys saw him!--but he dashed past his mother, who was standing at the gate, and disappeared in the house.

Lily, bareheaded in the pale April sunshine, had been watching for him rather anxiously. In deference to the occasion she had changed her dress; a string of green-gla.s.s beads, encircling her plump white neck, glimmered through the starched freshness of an incredibly frank blouse, and her white duck skirt was spotless. Her whole little fat body was as fresh and sweet as one of her own hyacinths, and her kind face had the unchanging, unhuman youthfulness of flesh and blood which has never been harried by the indwelling soul. But she was frowning. She had begun to be nervous; Jacky had been away nearly two hours! "Are they playing a gum game on me?" Lily thought; "Are they going to try and kidnap him?"

It was then that she caught sight of Jacky, tearing toward home, his fierce blue eyes raking the street for any of them there Dennett boys, who must have the tar licked out of 'em! Edith was following him, in hurrying anxiety. Instantly Lily was rea.s.sured. "One of Mrs. Curtis's lady friends, I suppose," she thought. "Well, it's up to me to keep her guessing on Jacky!" She was very polite and simpering when, at the gate, Edith said that Mr. Curtis asked her to bring Jacky home.

"Won't you come in and be seated?" Lily urged, hospitably.

Edith said no; she was sorry; but she must go right back; "Mrs. Curtis is very ill, I am sorry to say."

At this moment Jacky came out to the gate; he had two cookies in his hand. He said, shyly: "Maw's is better 'an yours. You can have"--this with a real effort--"the _big_ one."

Edith took the "big one," pleasantly, and said, "Yes, they are nicer than ours, Jacky."

But Lily was mortified. "The lady'll think you have no manners. Go on back into the house!"

"Won't," said Jacky, eating his cooky.

His mother tried to cover his obstinacy with conversation: "He's crazy about Mr. Curtis. Well, no wonder. Mr. Curtis was a great friend of my husband's. Mr. Dale--his name was Augustus; I named Jacky after him; Ernest Augustus. He died three years ago; no, I guess it was two--"

"Huh?" said Jacky, interested, "You said my paw died--"

Lily, with that desire to smack her son which every mother knows, cut his puzzled arithmetic short. "Yes. Mr. Dale was a great clubman. In Philadelphia. I believe that's where he and Mr. Curtis got to be chums.

But I never met _her_."

Edith said, rigidly, "Really?"

"Jacky's the image of Mr. Dale. He died of--of typhus fever. Mr. Curtis was one of the pallbearers; that's how I got acquainted with him. Jacky was six then," Lily ended, breathlessly. ("I guess _that's_ fixed her,"

she thought.)

Edith only said again, "Really?" Then added, "Good afternoon," and hurried away. So _this_ was the woman Eleanor would make Maurice marry!

"Never!" Edith said. "Never! if _I_ can prevent it!"